Epic Default Productions

Three Ways to Destroy ______

by Jake Prime on May.03, 2009, under Rants

In continuation of my favorite sport, Internet nerd raging, I am back and on the prowl. This week, Nintendo takes it on the chin.

Nintendo, a 100-year-old company with a rich history in making me their slave, has three Achilles’ heels that could destroy them. The bonds that hold me to Nintendo can be broken, however, with the destruction of the company. How could that happen? Let us find out.

deadnintendo

1. Crappy games

Currently Nintendo fails at licensing quality games for the Wii department. Sure, most of the games Nintendo produces rate on the good side, but the majority of the games that exist for the Wii do not.  While sending out shovelware after shovelware be not a mortal sin, continuing to do so, as Sony and their first two iterations will tell you, will disenchant your market. If game buyers are continually burned by a series of games, those buyers will eventually reduce the number of games they bought to an amount so low that it will be impossible to for the company stay financially secure. ET and Pac-man were major causes to the video game crash of 1983, and led to the eventual downfall of Atari.

2. Too egotistical

Nintendo did it once, and got burned bad. Remember the N64? It was overpriced with only 378 games, lacking a large quantity of games, compared to the Playstation’s 1,000+ games.  Nintendo thought they knew exactly what everyone wanted, and did not even assume the competition—Sega’s faltering Saturn, the upcoming Dreamcast, and Sony’s new Playstation—would challenge their long-time superiority. This view of “anything you can do, we have done better” hurt Nintendo’s console market and led them to taking third place in the rankings of the sixth generation.  The old adage “history repeats itself” could prove itself again with Nintendo. With the Wii and DS sales being what they are, Nintendo must remember to limit their egotistical nature and provide a solid number of quality games at decent prices.

3. Ignore the core market

Nintendo has two extremely strong franchises in Mario and Pokémon.  The core market loves Mario and Pokémon, and does not want to give up those games. Overuse of Mario and Pikachu in particular is one of the largest complaints people have. However, those who make these complaints lack any sort of business sense. If a character is popular, has quality games, provides a substantial profit, and appeals to many people, removal is a death sentence to a company; Nintendo would destroy themselves by removing these two franchises. The combined powers of five Pokémon and six Mario games make up more than $5 billion of the top 20 console games of all time.  People love Mario and Pikachu, and removing the quality games that they produce will create a huge void in Nintendo’s market share.

Nintendo also has a reputation of making games for kids. So much so that, when an adult title comes out, it makes headlines. When those games do come out, they usually present a lackluster number of sales, since Nintendo carries the stigma of being a children’s system.  Nintendo needs to remember that their market is to non-gamers. With the DS and the Wii being enjoyed by more softcore gamers than any of their competitors, due to both price and the change from traditional games, Nintendo has created a great market niche for themselves. Without children (and some older adults), Nintendo would just be another Xbox or Playstation, and while they could probably compete and hold their own with them, making games for an under-represented market is far safer and better for all companies involved. Remember growing up on Nintendo products? Would your love for video games to be weaker today if you had not grown up playing games? Have the rhetorical questions caused you to pull your hair out? I believe the answer is “yes” to these questions for most readers.

While other ways exist, these three reasons have the potential to crush the video game giant that is Nintendo. How can Nintendo avoid such a fate? Well, I can assist in saving this company, for a small yearly fee and moving expenses to Japan. You hear that Nintendo, I am here to help you!

Next time on “Three Ways to Kill ____,” can the giant be slain, or has Microsoft become too powerful to fail?

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1 comment for this entry:
  1. eye-shuh
    May 4th, 2009 on 10:38 am

    Yikes. So,

    Point (1) I’m not sure why they would stop putting out massive shovelware as it has thus far made them millions on the Wii and DID in fact work magnificently for the Playstation2.

    Point (2) Yes, I agree. They have a bad habit of assuming they’re all powerful, when really they’re only MOSTLY all powerful.

    Point (3) I’m not sure how or why it would be a good idea to play to the niche children market. Nintendo’s cash cow has always been the core gamers, i.e. Mario and Pikachu. I’ll give you a lot of the games in those franchises are aimed at the youth, but what made them so popular in the first place was their mass appeal to EVERYONE of all ages. They are and were good games. Plain and simple. They shouldn’t be dumbing down their games, that’s exactly how they’ll fail. They need to get back to their roots and start producing games that core gamers love and that casual gamers can buy because it’s popular and then leave under the couch.

    While other systems have tried to create games that everyone can enjoy, Mario games are the ones that stand out as loved by everybody big and small. They need to get back to their roots and start producing quality games. They have all the building blocks already, somebody just needs to tell Miyamoto to put down the fake clarinet wiimote and go to town on the next big Super Mario game.

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